Page 12 of Storm and Sea

Nyel stiffened, the fins along his back flaring. “I’m not a kid. And you don’t know a thing about me.”

“Bianca made sure of that.”

“Don’t blame Mom. You could have stuck around.”

“No. I couldn’t,” he said with finality. His words dissipated in the water like a drawn-out echo. After a brief pause, during which Nephi crunched loudly on the twig in his mouth, he asked, “So none of the sirena she dragged in appealed to your tastes?”

“No sirena has ever appealed to my tastes. I don’t even know if I have tastes,” Nyel replied bitterly. “And I’m tired of being shown around the village like a prize crab at the fair.”

“Interesting,” Nephi said, tilting his head and narrowing his eyes thoughtfully.

“What is?”

“Nothing. Where are you going?” he asked again.

“The tower island. Just until mom calms down.”

At this, Nephi bolted upright, fins flared, his relaxed demeanor vanishing. “That’s a human island,” he said, his tone biting. “You’re going to surface on human land? Do you have a death wish?” The growl in his voice sent vibrations rippling through the water.

Nyel flinched and floated away a few inches despite himself. He knew Nephi had no reason to hurt him.

Probably.

Yet, the scars along Nephi’s body told a story of violence, and that visual warning kept Nyel at a tail’s distance. Even when Nephi first arrived—his wounds fresh, the pain making him whimper through the night—Nyel couldn’t bring himself to go to him. He couldn’t leave the safety of his bed to comfort the Mer, who shared half his blood. As Nephi’s labored breathing echoed through the floorboards, Nyel lay frozen, too afraid to move, too afraid to sleep. The warning to never approach a wounded animal, to never back it into a corner, rang in his mind.

There was a reason halflings were taboo. There was a reason Nyel’s mother didn’t allow Nephi into the house—a reason Nyel was secretly grateful for. When two species of Mer interbred, it was seen as defiance against the Seven Spirits, a direct rebellion against the gift of life. As punishment, the resulting child was born severed from Them.

Disconnected and cursed.

These were the stories told to him as a child; cautionary tales pounded into his mind—the monsters he grew to fear. Halflings were cursed. From their first breath, Skraith lived within them: dark spirits that drove a Mer to madness. Violent. Dangerous. Nyel was privy to many stories of halfling children turning on their families. Even killing their own flesh and blood. That’s why they were silenced at birth. It’s why everyone in the village, including his family, treated Nephi like a dangerous animal.

Because he might be.

The scars on his body were only a testament to the violence he’d experienced—the horrors he’d taken part in. And even though there was no possible way they were interconnected, the fact that mere days after Nephi arrived, his uncle Santé was found dead only served as another bad omen—a curse brought to their village by the halfling carrying Skraith in his body.

Nyel couldn’t stop himself from flinching as Nephi turned toward him—a motion his half-brother didn’t miss. For a moment, Nephi’s face softened, and a guilty knot tightened in Nyel’s stomach. But that fleeting moment of vulnerability vanished as quickly as it appeared, replaced by the sharp gleam of fangs and slitted pupils.

“S-sorry, I didn’t mean to—” Nyel tried to correct.

“Forget it,” Nephi said, rising, “Go to the human’s den. Anywhere is safer than with a halfling monster, right?” And before Nyel could speak, Nephi was gone, darting farther from the village and into the darkening sea.

The underside of the waves rolled as the water crested and crashed in a flurry of foam. Nyel squinted as beams of light distorted with each ocean pull. He could do this. He could go up there and let Marvassa change him.

“Just go. Now… now…. now.”

He kept saying the word like it might magically transport him to the surface, and he wouldn’t have to do it himself.

The waves continued to roll above him. Sonia assured him the humans left the island a long time ago, and he trusted her. Nephi was paranoid. He was obsessed and acted like the humans were hiding behind each crevice and hollow, ready to kill anything that moved. Sireni were cautious of the land dwellers, but Nephi’s views were extreme.

Still, Nyel had never met a human, and he wanted to keep it that way.

“There is nobody there. No boats,” Nyel said to himself. “Just…. Go!”

Swishing his tail, Nyel propelled himself through the water and, with a gasp, broke the surface. A wave carried him to the shore, where he tumbled on the soft sand, sputtering. He choked a moment, the pull in his gills no longer working. Nyel opened his mouth, sucking air as something inside him inflated. It was like a blowfish, continuing to puff up and deflate with every breath. He supposed this is how land creatures breathed, awkward as it was. It took him a moment to realize that nothing about his exterior had changed.

Rain pelted him, the sky alive with tears and rage as veins of light flashed in the clouds. And when the air above him cracked, Nyel cried out in shock, clapping his hands over his ear fins. The sound was so much stronger on the surface. He had to get out of this.

Nyel ran up the shore, his taloned feet sinking in the sand. Sopping grass squished between his toes as he fled the beach. He squinted through the rain, spotting the human shelter. It was a square-shaped building with a mighty tower that supported the sky. It took him a moment to find the entrance before shoving it open and closing it behind him. Instantly, the noise muffled, and he let out a sigh of relief.